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Numerous steeples and spires rise above Hazleton’s skyline, symbolizing the deeply rooted religious beliefs of the area’s first inhabitants and the waves of immigrants who followed and settled here.

Their churches remain, but new churches and congregations have emerged as well in recent years — many of them worshiping in non-traditional places such as downtown stores, parks and former factories.

“This has always been a town that very clearly embraced its religious heritage. The people who came here brought their faith with them and recognized it was a very essential part of their lives,” said the Rev. Gregory Finn, pastor of Holy Annunciation Parish at St. Gabriel’s Church in Hazleton.

St. Gabriel’s traces its history to 1855, when Irish immigrants flocked to the anthracite fields seeking work and a new life. The church welcomed other immigrants from Europe in the 1880s as the mother church of the region, and continues to welcome new immigrants to this day.

The traditional Irish church began offering Masses in Spanish more than 20 years ago to minister to an influx of Mexican immigrants, many of them migrant workers in the Butler Valley, Finn said.

“Here they were welcome to have Mass as the group came together about once a month,” he said. “The community began to grow and so eventually after a few years, it became a weekly Mass.”

Then, the Hispanic population in the area shifted, as an anti-immigration sentiment grew in the community and Hazleton passed anti-immigration legislation, Finn said.

“The Mexican community, largely being undocumented people, were fearful and began to move away,” he said. “Instead, who took their place were Dominican people and the Dominicans are an entirely different group, ethically, linguistically and culturally, than the Mexican people.”

Most Dominican people are documented — many maintaining dual citizenship as their ties to their home country, the Dominican Republic, remain very strong and they identify themselves as Dominican, just as early Irish, German, Slovak and Polish immigrants identified with their home countries, he said.

“They’re much more demonstrative. They’re much more extroverted. They’re much more active and energetic. You have much more clamor. You have excitement. You have activity,” Finn said. “The Mexican people tend to be low-key, hard-working ... trying to keep quiet and out of sight. Dominicans are just the opposite.”

The church now offers two Spanish Masses on Sundays, accommodating close to 1,000 people, and hosts two youth groups — one in English and one in Spanish, as there are still children in the parish who speak more Spanish than English, but that is shifting, too, he said.

Hazleton’s early immigrants spoke very little English, but their children spoke both English and their native tongues, Finn said. The next generation was the one that became more fully integrated in the American language and culture, he said.

“The grandchildren grew up only knowing English, only knowing America, only wanting to be American, and things change,” Finn said. “We see the same kind of thing coming here.”

Lately, Finn and the other pastors noticed more people coming to the English Masses, not just because they recognize that they’re welcome, but they can follow them, he said.

“Because they have more English and the kids especially prefer it, because they can understand it,” Finn said.

Those who speak more Spanish tend to be more culturally integrated and have a greater comfort zone with their own people, just as the early immigrants did, he said.

“It’s a kind of gradual coming together. It’s really because the grandchildren are more ethnically, culturally American than Latino that actually becomes the drawing together of it all,” Finn explained. “Our goal is to preserve their cultural heritage, but help them to live it in an American context so that they can bring in the richness that other ethnic European groups have brought to the American culture.”

Holy Annunciation Parish today is a blend of different ethnic churches, which merged in a diocesan-wide consolidation that saw half of the area’s Roman Catholic churches close, bringing together the Irish people of St. Gabriel’s, the Tyrolean people of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and the German of Holy Trinity German Church, which is now Maranatha Seventh Day Adventist Romanian and Multinational Church.

Finn noted that the church makes an effort to honor their heritages, such as keeping the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel or hosting an annual polenta dinner, he said.

“We try to keep all of those roots as much as possible, as well as the Irish ones,” he said.

Other denominations

Not all of the area’s recent immigrants have turned to the Catholic church, as numerous small churches — mostly Pentecostal — have opened throughout town taking advantage of now-vacant churches and storefronts.

“The Pentecostal churches are fulfilling a need of people who clearly need to find God,” Finn said. “But they’re doing it in a way that is much more appealing on a cultural level to the Dominicans, who love drama and exciting music and emotional expressions. As Catholics, we tend to be much more moderate.

“The Pentecostal churches of all types are all about the emotional expression of their faith. So that has a huge appeal, which is why we’re seeing them spring up,” he said.

One church, Bethesda Christian Church, met in a former gym on Lafayette Court until First Presbyterian Church in Hazleton offered to provide space for the growing church’s bilingual services a few years ago.

Another church, Church of God, or Iglesia de Dios, was meeting down the street from First Presbyterian in a shop in West Broad Street before moving to a former bridal shop on South Church Street a few years ago.

Yet another church, Hill City Church, meets in a former factory and warehouse in Hazleton, where they transformed the space to resemble a small town with a kids’ area, a coffee shop, atrium, prayer room, a youth area, sports area, a recording studio and the auditorium, where worship services are held, said Clark Gerhart, pastor.

“We want people to spend their lives together, not just come and go quickly and do their religious ritual and leave,” he said.

The non-denominational Christian church worshiped in living rooms, then the Ramada Inn and a movie theater before settling into its South Poplar Street home, he said. The movie theater worked, because as an affiliate of Lives Changed By Christ, or LCBC, they share videos and other resources, but they only had the space for a few hours a week, Gerhart said.

With this space, people can gather more than once a week.

“We have a lot of life groups and events that go on during the week, just to help people connect and grow,” said worship leader and assistant pastor Brooke Gerhart, the pastor’s son, who left a music career in Nashville, Tennessee, to return to the church. He continues to write music; the recording studio is his office.

Music is integral to their work, according to the younger Gerhart.

“I think everyone can connect to music, no matter where you’re at or what age,” he said, noting that a live band performs on stage in the auditorium each week during Sunday service.

The auditorium easily seats 200 to 250 people and a large projection screen sits in the middle of the stage, where the band is set up, to show video, Clark Gerhart said. They can also project video and other messages onto the walls in the front of the auditorium.

Children enjoy their own area — Kidstown, which is set up as town with a general store and theater that serve as classrooms where they do crafts and play games geared around Bible stories, principles and morals, as part of the Sunday school program.

“That’s part of the resources that we got from LCBC,” Brooke Gerhart said. “Since we implemented it, we’ve had kids say, ‘We don’t want to leave. When can we come back?’ You never hear kids say that at church. It’s been really exciting to see that total attitude change.”

The church also has a 5,000-square-foot youth sporting area, where young people gather for baseball, kickball and softball on Friday nights. There is also a batting cage, a weight training area, arcade and youth area. They often hear parents remark about how strange it is that their kids want to go to church on Friday nights, Brooke Gerhart said.

“We love that,” he said.

They also do open mic and acoustic nights in the cafe, which is also open before Sunday service so people can get a cup of coffee and socialize.

“Part of the reason we do stuff like this is we want to break down the barriers of what church and what being involved in the community is,” Brooke Gerhart said. “We want people to recognize that Christianity and your faith is supposed to be influencing your community and working together. We’re all in this together.

“If we want God to transform people’s lives, we have to transform the community as well,” he said.

Church leaders avoid religious words, such as sanctuary, which might turn off some people who have negative feelings about traditional churches, he said.

“The millennial generation, the 20-somethings now ... They are very turned off by tradition, by things being forced on them and by rules and yet, they are a spiritual group and they want to pursue spirituality and God,” Clark Gerhart said. “We try to remove some of the barriers that keep people from experiencing God.”

He explained that Hill City’s message is the same as other churches — salvation through Christ — but it’s delivered in a way that people receive more easily.

“We’re trying to recapture those people for whatever reason they left that traditional-style church. So, we’re going to be a non-traditional, very vibrant, very dynamic, very spiritual experience for people,” Clark Gerhart said. “We’re not trying to change other people who are happy with their religious expression in their churches. That’s not what we’re about at all.

“We want to be the alternative to those who are falling out of the denominations and losing contact with God,” he said. “We want people who would never go to church to come here.”

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